One hundred and forty years ago today, Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937) was born in Hungary as Laub Fülöp Elek. From a humble beginning, László grew up to become one of the most important portrait painters of the 20th century, with everyone from Pope Leo XIII to four American presidents (Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover) sitting for him. As his patron Lord Selborne once asked, “Has any one painter ever before painted so many interesting and historical personage?”

1. At age 7, or maybe 10, the then-Princess Elizabeth of York sat for a László portrait that her mother, the Duchess of York, had commissioned. Recently asked if she remembered the first time she sat for an artist, Queen Elizabeth recalled her sitting for László, letting slip that she thought he was a “horrible” person. The royal biographer believes she may have just meant the artist was “a bit foreign and stern.” The young princess was apparently “very sleepy and restless” during her sitting, according to László’s own account, but he still described her as “intelligent and full of character.” (László’s portrait of Princess Elizabeth is above, on the right.)

2. George Eastman had his portrait painted by László in 1916. He later gifted the artist with a 16mm motion picture camera, one of the first of its kind. The camera was used to film a black and white silent film of László painting the portrait of a fashion model. (Watch the film here.)

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Take the Quiz: The Office

Take the Quiz: Jack Donaghy

[Sorry, we don't have a Parks and Recreation quiz just yet.]

It was a mere 79 years ago that we discovered Pluto and embraced it as one of our nine planets. “Pluto!” we said. “We love you! You’re so tiny and cute!” And then in 2006, we dumped it like a bad boyfriend. But to celebrate the anniversary of the day we first laid eyes on Pluto, we’ll bring it back into the spotlight today.

1. Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, a researcher at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He was supposed to be looking for the mysterious Planet X, a planet that was only hypothesized by some other scientists who figured there must be another planet out there to explain the weird orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Upon discovering Pluto, Tombaugh announced to his superior, “Dr. Slipher, I have found your Planet X.” For various reasons, though, including its small size and strange orbit, it was discovered that Pluto couldn’t possibly be the Planet X they were looking for. But it was a planet (at least, it was then), and as a planet, it needed a name.
2. The planet was given its name by 11-year-old Venetia Phair of Oxford, England. Her grandpa read about the discovery of this new planet in The Times and suggested that she give the name a go. Venetia thought Pluto would be a fitting name, after the Roman God of the underworld who had the power of invisibility. But that was only part of the reason the name was picked – Tombaugh liked the name because it started with the letters P and L, which were the initials of Percival Lowell, the man behind the whole Planet X theory. Lowell passed away in 1916. Venetia is still around and doesn’t really care if Pluto is a planet or not – she recently said she’s been pretty indifferent to the whole debate, but if she had to pick one way or another, she supposes she’d have to lean toward planet. Oh, and her reward for naming the planet? Five pounds from her grandpa. She also has an asteroid named after her.

3. Yep, Mickey’s best pal Pluto was probably named after the planet. (more…)

So this is nerdy. Here’s a video from 1985 in which Andy Warhol digitally paints over a photo of Debbie Harry, at an Amiga computer launch. When they show the Amiga’s screen, check out the amazing lifelike graphics!

See also: Picasso’s “Think Different” Mac ad (though no actual computers are involved).

(Via Kottke.org.)

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Only you can prevent forest fires. Take a bite out of crime. What do these slogans have in common? They are all public service announcements, or PSAs, and they are ingrained in our memories thanks to the Ad Council.

What is the Ad Council?

The Ad Council was formed in 1942 when a group of Madison Avenue advertising execs wanted to contribute to the war effort without actually leaving their day jobs. The result was a series of ads encouraging Americans to buy war bonds. They were so successful that President Roosevelt encouraged the organization to continue the program after the war had ended.

How does it work? A non-profit or government organization (such as the Boys Clubs of America or the Department of Homeland Security) approaches the Ad Council with a cause that needs support. The Council farms out the job to an advertising agency, which provides its creative and production work free of charge. The people that appear in PSA spots, whether celebrities or civilians, get no pay and no residuals for their work. The Council then approaches different media outlets – radio, TV and even the Internet – to get the ads placed (again, free of charge). The Ad Council requires that PSAs promote positive social change in such areas as the quality of life for children, preventative health, education, community well being, and environmental preservation.

Smokey Bear

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On Monday, buildings throughout Manhattan’s financial district were evacuated, emergency responders were inundated with panicked phone calls, and one pregnant woman had to go to the hospital after a Boeing 747 apparently chased by a F-16 jet flew less than 1500 feet above the city’s sky-line.

Federal officials had an inkling that the stunt may cause “public concern,” but that didn’t stop them from going ahead with their plans to buzz traumatized Lower Manhattan. But the incident – and the sound raking over the coals the feds have taken in its wake – put us in mind of other “innocent” ideas that prompted fierce and quick mass hysteria. Here are some recent examples.

Holy Hand Grenade evacuates city block

In March, London Police evacuated several buildings, including a pub, in an East London neighborhood after water company workers discovered a suspicious-looking device under a manhole cover.

The suspicious-looking device? A replica of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch from the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yes, it was painted gold and said “Holy Hand Grenade” on it. Yes, it was just like the one used in the movie to slay the vicious killer rabbit (“It’s got fangs!”). And yes, it shut down a Shoreditch block for nearly an hour as police tried to figure out if it was dangerous.

Police confirmed that the unknown object was indeed a Holy Hand Grenade, but there’s no word on whether the Holy Pin was still intact.

Cartoon ads bring Boston to standstill

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When I was just ten months old, my father was killed in an accident. (Not to get all morbid on a Thursday morning, but it’s relevant, I promise.) Among other things, he was an amateur filmmaker, and a few years ago I stumbled across a treasure trove of 8mm film he had shot in the 60s and 70s. Most of it was home movie-type stuff (from which I made an ultra-short found footage film, here), but in a shoebox all its own were several reels labeled “Truckin’.” Tucked in between them was a yellowing, typed page of instructions, with references to specific shots and how they should match up to specific lyrics in a song. It was a “paper edit,” as they’re called, of an amateur music video my father had created for one of his favorite songs — “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead — but never got the opportunity to cut together himself.

I was not myself a fan of the Dead, but I knew what I had to do: use the footage and the paper edit to finish my father’s music video, more than 35 years after he had shot it. So I had the reels digitized, loaded them into Final Cut Pro, and cut it together, second by second, per his instructions. It was no great masterpiece by any standard: shaky and out of focus, most of the shots featured a friend of his thumbing his way down the country roads of then-rural Eastern Maryland. But my mom really appreciated seeing it, as did old friends of my father, who could watch it because I uploaded the video to YouTube and sent them links to it.

But in January, I noticed that the video was no longer on my YouTube page. It had been disabled, with a curt note from YouTube saying that Warner Music Group, Inc had detected a copyright violation in the video and requested that it be pulled. (WMG, of course, owns the rights to much of the Grateful Dead’s catalog.) I was apparently not the only YouTube user to have a seemingly innocuous video pulled down by WMG: in a particularly egregious example, a video of a young woman singing “Winter Wonderland” was yanked for similar reasons.

The reason is this: YouTube has created something called the “content ID system,” which allows copyright owners to use an automated search to find and take down content that appears to match theirs. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Fred von Lohmann, “These systems are still primitive and unable to distinguish a transformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses.” The same article describes what happened on YouTube in January as a “fair use massacre” — (more…)

Through Facebook groups, updated versions and even an iPhone app, the classic video game The Oregon Trail has survived much longer than any player ever did in the game. See how well you remember the game with our quiz. We can’t promise you’ll make it to the end without getting dysentery, though.

Take the Quiz: The Oregon Trail

Helium’s atomic number is 2 and its atomic weight is 4.002602. It’s boiling and melting points – -452.07°F and -458.0°F, respectively – are the lowest among the elements. It is the second most abundant element in the known universe (after hydrogen). And it makes your voice sound really funny when you inhale it.

A Crash Course in Sound

When you speak, air travels up from your lungs and through the larynx, where it meets the vocal cords (or vocal folds), twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx, and hits their underside, causing them to vibrate. The vibration of the cords excites air molecules in your vocal tract and sets up resonant frequencies. The vibration of the vocal cords influences the pitch (the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound) of your voice, the vibration of the air in the vocal tract influences your voice’s timbre (the quality of a sound that distinguishes different types of sound production; remember that for later, it will be important) and manipulation of the vocal tract – moving your tongue, lips, etc. – creates different resonant frequencies and allows you to make the different sounds of speech, likes “oohs” and “aahs.” Your voice finally leaves your mouth in the form of waves, oscillations of pressure transmitted through a medium.

Voice, Meet Helium

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When longtime Republican senator Arlen Spector announced earlier this week that he was ditching the GOP to become a Democrat, the news set Washington atwitter. Not only did the Republicans lose one of their most visible faces in the Senate, but the Democrats also inched closer to gaining the all-important 60-seat majority. Party changes like this are obviously uncommon, but some surprising people have changed teams at some point in their careers. Here’s a look at some well-known politicians who changed their minds:

1. Ronald Reagan

Reagan may be a conservative icon now, but he originally leaned to the left. Reagan’s father was liberal, and as a boy, the future president was a great admirer of FDR. When Reagan became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, though, he started to migrate to the right and even testified during the McCarthy hearings as a friendly witness. At the start of the 1950 senatorial race in California, he was still enough of a Democrat to endorse the party’s candidate, Helen Douglas. Later in the campaign, though, he changed his mind and threw his support behind the GOP candidate, a young up-and-comer named Richard Nixon. The rest was history.

2. Arlen Spector

Wait, everyone knows Spector changed parties…that only happened a few days ago! Not so fast. This week’s migration was actually the second time in his career Specter switched parties. (more…)